Top Highlights

• how, in other words, we have come to separate the domain of material facts from the realm of moral and religious values.
• common narratives about the trajectory of science that mirror this scale, beginning with its birth among the ancient Greeks, its decline in the Christian Middle Ages, its revival with the scientific revolution, and final triumph with the professionalization of science in the nineteenth century.
• “science” and “religion” are concepts of relatively recent coinage,
• What I have in mind is not only to set out the story of how these categories “science” and “religion” emerge in Western consciousness, but also to show how the manner of their emergence can provide crucial insights into their present relations.
• the compartmentalization of modern Western culture that gave rise to these distinct notions “science” and “religion” resulted not from a rational or dispassionate consideration of how to divide cultural life along natural fracture lines, but to a significant degree has been to do with political power—broadly conceived—and the accidents of history.